Written by: DiggerI grew up in a family with two sisters. As an unfortunate result, I, through no fault of my own, ended up watching a lot of movies as a child that had horses in them. These films ranged in quality from the somewhat respectable The Man from Snowy River to the absolutely hideous My Little Pony Movie. Somewhere in the middle of all that is the memory of a film that my sisters watched a lot, and I mean a lot; something like two or three times a week. It’s called Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken and is about, get this, professional horse diving. The subject of this film always baffled me as a child and, even today, I can’t quite get my head around this concept. Apparently, if this movie is to be believed, during the great depression people were so bored out of their skulls that a woman jumping onto a horse’s back and then falling into an above-ground pool was seen as grade A entertainment. From what I understand, this story is based on the real life events of Sonora Webster Carver, so I guess people were, in fact, that bored.
Wild Hearts Can’t be bothered with a shorter title opens with or heroine Sonora, played by Gabrielle Anwar, as an orphaned child growing up during the depression and going through a defiant phase in her life, punctuated by a scene of her cutting her own hair… rebelliously. After she gets into some trouble breaking a fence, she runs away from her mean old aunt to join the circus and be with horses all the time. I’m guessing that every twelve-year-old little girl is supposed to relate to this, but I was born with a Y chromosome, so I liked dinosaurs instead. There, she meets up with some weaselly red-headed kid slinging hot dogs and a professional horse-diving troop lead by Doctor W.F. Carver, played by Cliff Robertson, the poor man’s Sam Elliot. In all fairness, Mr. Robertson is this film’s only cast member who, after this feature, retained something resembling a career in acting. His son, Al Carver, is played by Michael Schoeffing, who you may recognize as the studly guy from Sixteen Candles. Anyway, Sonora wants to join up with the horse diving team and decides that the best way to present herself as a valuable asset is to annoy the living hell out of Dr. Carver until he finally breaks down and takes her on as a stable hand.
As the group travels from town to town, they acquire a energetic, and somewhat feral, horse that nobody can handle. Sonora can relate to the free spirit of the psychotic animal and, to prove to Dr. Carver that she can do more than clean up horse crap, decides to tame the wild horse with the help of Al and a handy training montage. She then shows Dr. Carver that she has tamed the beast, whom she has named Lightning, and that she is ready to become a horse diver herself. Dr. Carver is mildly impressed, but tells Sonora that she must learn to mount the horse while it is moving to become a proper horse diver. So, in the second training montage in just as many minutes, we get to see Sonora crash into the dirt about fifty times as she constantly fails to mount Lightning while he is running. I think this is meant to convey her unwavering determination, but I was too busy laughing to care about that. Bloodied and beaten, she does eventually get the hang of it. Not to be upstaged, the team’s caddy horse diving prima donna Marie thinks that she too has what it takes to ride the Lighting. The horse, sensing her smug, superior attitude, instantly catapults Marie off his back and onto the ground. Since their star performer is now injured, Dr. Carver begrudgingly lets Sonora take center stage, or center platform eighty feet in the air, in their next horse diving extravaganza.
After Sonora finally becomes the horse diver she always wanted to be, we still have about half a movie left. The story meanders around for the rest of its running time, but does take some pretty dark turns as we see yet another montage of several fairs and circuses closing down, Dr. Carver dies of a heart attack, Lightning gets sick and Sonora becomes blind. Even with all these awful occurrences, Sonora still sticks it out as a horse diver, Al carries on his father’s legacy of horse-based entertainment, and we learn through a little end movie narration that the two eventually get married. I think there was some kind of romantic subplot going on between Sonora and Al that justifies this, but I can’t be sure. I’m actually very startled at how much of this movie I do remember. I can’t in good conscience recommend this flick to anyone unless you have a daughter or you, yourself, are really into horses, and montages.
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